This set includes 1 copy of No Green Berries or Leaves (softcover) and 1 copy of Spark the Creative Flame (hardcover).

Spark the Creative Flame is a source of information and inspiration for the thousands of people who are discovering the creative possibilities of crafting glass through flameworking and evolving their craft into art. This book is an educational resource for individuals engaged in self-directed learning as well as a text for college-level art and craft programs. While Spark the Creative Flame focuses on flameworked glass, the themes transcend material and speak to broader issues and challenges relevant to all artists/craftspeople.

The book represents an original and in-depth look at a community of twelve artists embracing flameworking as a vehicle for their artistic expression. It tells the story of how each artist evolved from, in many cases, a childhood interest in making things, to art education and/or apprenticeships, to searching for--and finding--his or her own personal voice in glass. Challenges the profiled artists overcame and perseverance they demonstrated throughout their journeys is emphasized in the book.

The combination of craft history, personal philosoply from a respected maker, and in-depth appreciations of twelve significant makers gives this book its uniqueness. The book celebrates work and artists that pursue and have maintained integrity, originality, and mastery of process. The fusion of in-depth, well-researched artist biographies, with color images of their signature work, accessibility, and explanations of complex issues in an approachable, meaningful way, makes this book a "must read" for the intended audience.

No Green Berries or Leaves--The Creative Journey of an Artist in Glass is a collection of autobiographical essays by Paul J. Stankard, recognized widely as one of the world's master glass artists.

Stankard is particularly renowned and respected for his flameworked floral motifs expressed in crystal paperweights, rectangular columns, and orbs. Stankard was trained in scientific glassblowing and worked in industrial scientific glass during most of the 1960s. Challenged by an inner sense of creativity and the need to establish his creative independence, he started making paperweights in the early 1970s. Attracted to the emerging studio glass movement, recognized as a maker of fine paperweights, and driven by an intense and incessant pursuit of excellence, Stankard was -- by the 1980s -- recognized as a highly accomplished glass artist, a member of the pioneering generation of glass artists in America. As the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of his art matured, and as he continued to develop new techniques for expressing his art, he also assumed more prominent influence in the development of educational programs and institutions that celebrated and expanded art in glass. Throughout his life, Stankard also wrestled with, and learned how to succeed in spite of, a learning disability -- dyslexia.

No Green Berries or Leaves presents the author's record of his life as a struggling, then highly successful, artist; reveals insights into the challenges he faced as a dyslexic and how he came to understand, then circumvent, his disability; and records his perspectives on the history of the studio glass movement in America as he witnessed and experienced it during the past fifty years.

Reg. Price $67.90. SAVE $29.40 BY ORDERING THIS SET NOW! Available until 3/31/18